Overqualified
by That One Secretary
Summary: The Mafia gets caught in the wheel of reincarnation and what walks out is a Hibari's retirement plan. She's got killer looks, foresight, a gun she can allegedly use, speaks 7 languages, and still thinks she's a 33-year-old attorney out on an insanity plea. The Varia needs a cloud guardian, and frankly...she's overqualified.
1. The First Name

"You don't want my help, do you."

His defeat hangs heavily in the air between them. She stretches out a bit further on his grey couch. Cracks a mint between her teeth. "Nope." She says, popping the 'p'. _'There is,'_ she notes mildly, _'a hole in my sock.' _He sighs. She snorts and wiggles her toe, flashing her teeth at him briefly.

"What do you want me to say doc?" "We could start with _why _you don't want my help." He sounds tired. "Well it all started when I was 12—" "Weren't you 10 the last time you fed me that story?"

She rolls her eyes to the ceiling and fixes on the crimson fire alarm. _'I can stop coming here if it burns down.' _

"Well excuse me, there's only so many times I can say it without getting it mixed up. Reconstructive memory. You _did _graduate, right?"

"I don't think you forgot." He says and sets his clipboard on the table between them. She could look if she wanted to.

She doesn't.

"I think," He continues. "That you like this. You like lying to me, watching me go round in circles."

"Aren't you going to ask me if I've lost any other memories?" She asks, ignoring him. "It's a side effect of my medication." "I asked you that last time." He says patiently. She smiles.

"Yet another reason to be concerned."

"When's the last time you've forgotten something? Don't give me that look. I mean really. When's the last time you've forgotten something?"

Her eyes slide from his, fixing on his ear instead. _'I could probably bite it off. I've seen it in movies.'_

She bites her lip, playing her hesitation in a creased brow and a silence that pricks into them like needles. "I…" "Yes?" He says, sitting forward. "I forgot how damn useless you were." He sits back heavily, the old leather moaning beneath him.

"Fine. Fine. You haven't forgotten a damned thing. You never do. That's how you passed the bar exam, isn't it? You memorized everything you needed to, passed with flying colors, then stabbed one of the legal partners through the eye with a corkscrew."

She jerks up, swinging her legs to the ground—she knocks over her boots and leans forward, elbows on her knees. "Right?" She grins, gesturing with long, narrow fingers. "It was like, so wild!" she laughs and falls back into the couch. "Like, dude, why did you even have a corkscrew in your office?" she shakes her head. "Wild."

"You would never mix up your stories." He says softly, breaking the silence that had fallen in the wake of her harsh, jagged laughter. "Why do you like lying to me?"

Her eyes flatten and the illusion of humor falls off her face. She clasps her hands between her knees. "You didn't take the bait." She notes mildly. "I didn't." He agreed. "I laughed at blinding someone." "Does it bother you? Never forgetting anything?"

"No. His office had excellent acoustics: My laugh played well with him screaming."

He sighs. "You didn't laugh."

She grins. "How do you know I didn't? You think I'm lying to you doc."

"Because," He says. "You first tried to distract me from you lying by bringing up the…incident. Then I took the bait, which was good! Except then I said something you didn't like, so you waved the lying thing in front of my face again."

He shakes his head. "You can't keep doing this." "Sure I can." "People _notice." _He presses, leaning forward again—he's looking over his glasses at her now, earnest. "People _notice _when you try to manipulate them."

They're close. She could kick the coffee table right into his throat.

"Yeah." She says softly, quietly. She can see the darkness of her eyes reflected in his baby blues. "Yeah. People do notice when you manipulate them." Her lips peel back from her teeth, splitting her face in a display of bone. "You put me on a placebo, didn't you."

She sees his tongue roll over his teeth beneath his lips, bulging grotesquely beneath the white lights. He sits back, slowly. She leans forward, following him, and she isn't sitting anymore—her hands are on the table between them, and her spit flecks his face when she snarls: _"Am I on a placebo, doc?"_

"Security." He whispers and when her eyes widen and she lunges for him: "Security!"

The table crashes to the ground, the glass bowl of mints shattering. There's a shard in her foot when they drag her out, thick fingers around her arms and her boots abandoned in the office.

"What!" She laughs, as they drag her toward the stairs, stumbling and streaking blood behind her. "Did you think I was faking it! Did you think it was _Narcissism?" _"Get up!" One of the men snarls at her, and she goes limp and lets them wrench her down the stairs. Her knees hit every step.

"This was supposed to help me!" She screams, raw and high pitched.

"He can't help you if you don't want help!" A woman cries at her. She's protected by a thick glass pane and rows of pharmaceuticals behind her. There are people here, and they watch her with tense gazes. She remembers flirting with that nurse once, still early into her treatment.

"What do you know!" she roars and sinks her teeth into one of the knuckles clasped around her arm. He curses and shakes her off. She's flung through the doors. They swivel behind her. _"Order number 69." _Calls the automated response from inside, and someone goes to pick up their _real _prescription.

"Nice," she snorts then scrambles to her feet and runs. _'They're going to call the police. I'm going to jail for real this time.' _

She laughs wheezily and uses a streetlight to swing herself into an alley. It's freezing, and bits of ice come away on her fingertips. She stumbles when she realizes just how _cold _her feet were, socks wet and feet numb.

She stumbles straight into the road.

She…she'd always had especially high 'cognitive' functions. Reflexes, memory, coordination: A real prodigy she was.

There's light in her peripherals. It's white, and she sees it before it sees her. Her head twitches toward it and the leg with the shard in it buckles.

Her knee hits the road. The lights see her, and the horn shatters the air with a bellow. _'Idiot.' _She thinks and catches herself on a hand. Bits of the asphalt glitter beneath the headlights. _'You're too slow.'_

She died kneeling.

_(The bumper caved in her nose, maybe worse—all she knew was that every breath made her lungs feel heavy. They were filling up.) _

Well, that was what it looked like. Maybe that was her punishment. A lie, for all the lies she'd told when she was alive.

_('Can't they hear me? My hearts so loud.') _

They thought she'd been killed on impact: she'd been dragged beneath the wheels instead.

_('I can keep track of time like this. One beat. One second.' Her fingers twitch toward the sliver of light from beneath the truck. She can't feel her other arm, but she can hear it: the bone grinds and crunches as she shakes, trying so hard to reach.)_

How humiliating. How could she let people think she'd died on her knees? Didn't she know the lineage of the lives she'd led before this?

_("What are you doing, man?!" "I'm, I'm so sorry she came out of nowhere!" "It doesn't matter, go back! Maybe we can get her free!" 'No!' She screams with a rasping wheeze. A door slams and the engine guns. 'No! you have to wait for the emergency services!')_

How…ironic. She'd had an entire life full of people trying to listen, and she'd wasted it. Now they weren't listening, and where did that leave her?

_(She isn't breathing anymore, but she tastes the exhaust fumes thick in her throat. Her eyes burn but she can't feel the tears. Has it been 6 seconds already? No, longer. Her hearts slowing down.)_

Perhaps the lineage should end here. It's not like she'll learn anything. What if she dies on her knees _again?_

(_She's screaming. Can't they hear? The light is getting closer. It sounds like crunches and snaps and cracking bones. It's white and it's cold and she's _furious._ If she'd been driving, she'd have braked in time. If she'd witnessed, she would have made them wait for the emergency services. She was better than them. She was smarter than them. She was _everything _they were not.)_

_(She was dying. They weren't.)_

_(Her fury burns.)_

Every death had ended in fire. A fire of the mind was…different.

_(She dies, and she's pissed about it. Later, she realizes she'd bitten off her tongue: It was why she couldn't speak.)_

What was later_, _if she was dead? The answer to that is simple.

_(Her heart beats once. She counts every millisecond of the rush that fills her ears. It sounds like the ocean.)_

Later, was when she woke up.

* * *

Sato was the most common name in Japan. Takano was the name of the woman across the street from the orphanage: she owned a Dango stand.

It was how Takano Sato had gotten her name. It was how 7 other children in her nursery had gotten their names too. (Dango Stand Takano had not appreciated the slew of rumors that came with several orphans taking her name.)

Sato was below average. Her eyes glazed over when she looked at the sky, and she couldn't run two feet before tripping on her heels.

Sato _was_ good for one thing, though: The children liked to make her look into the sun, so they could see her brown skin turn caramel and her eyes, honey.

They found it fascinating.

They stopped finding it fascinating when a ring of red bloomed around her irises. They'd cried, come running to the matrons screaming that they'd blinded her: _'Its only a bit of coloring,' _they were soothed. _'I'm sure you just didn't notice before.'_

* * *

Sato started acting differently after that. It wasn't obvious at first.

She stopped tripping when she ran: instead, she ran until her legs gave out, with the frenzy of someone being chased. The children didn't find it strange: they thought it was fun! She was the best at tag, even when her feet bled and her eyes glazed and she stumbled and lurched like a drunkard.

"Why are you running?" One of the girls had asked her. _"They're going to arrest me." _Sato had replied in English. No-one else had heard, and the girl forgot.

* * *

A year later, Sato was 4. She'd fallen sick. The sick room was damp, sweat sticking your lashes together and filling the air with a stench like rot. She'd looked up at one of the matrons with wide, clear eyes. Clearer eyes than any other child in there, and for a moment the woman forgot why she was holding a wet cloth to the girl's head.

_"__What are you doing?" _Sato asked. The matron, who was fluent in 3 languages, thought the girl must have picked it up from her when she wasn't looking. _"I'm cooling your head." "My head is fine._" Sato said. _"But you have to check my heart, doc. It's ticking in seconds." "Go to sleep, Sato." _The matron soothed. "_That's not my name." _She said and slept.

* * *

Sato liked drawing. She drew flowers, and trees and the Dango Takano gave them if they ran errands for her. One day, she started drawing a man without an eye. The matrons grew concerned: Was there someone like that lingering around the children? _(He was wearing a suit. Everyone knew what the suits meant.)_

"No, silly." Sato had said. She'd stopped speaking in English, but sometimes her Japanese slowed down to a thick crawl. "The blood is bright red, not dark red. This is a…fresh wound. An artery. It's important. I think I did this."

"What do you mean?" One of the matrons asked, kneeling next to her in the lush grass. There was a small area behind the orphanage with a fence they'd built themselves. They grew most of their food.

"He told me I wouldn't do it." Sato says, staring mildly down at him. Then the moment passes, and she draws him a flower in his pocket. The matron stares at her. They keep watch for suited men.

* * *

Sato is complaining of the ocean. "It's in my ears. I can hear it rushing." "Do you mean your blood?" Takano asks and makes her count the money in the tip jar. Sato is quiet for a long moment before she turns and smiles. "Yeah. Thanks. I didn't recognize it without the crunching."

* * *

Sato is becoming faster at sums, at languages, at _everything. _She outpaces the others easily and devours the books in the orphanage with a hunger. "Isn't there anything else?" She demands, in sharp, slick Japanese. "You could play with the blocks?" A matron offers distractedly, looking through an accounts book. Sato teaches the kids density instead.

They don't have any books on density. Dango Takano never graduated Highschool.

Sato isn't teaching herself. She's reteaching.

This happens in months.

It gets worse after that.

"I need more." She begs the matron that speaks 3 languages. "I don't feel right like this. I need to know more than this. I…I _used _to know more than this." The matron looks at her, Sato's eyes filled with tears like starlight, and her heart softens. "I know Hindi." The matron offers her gently.

They're only a week into her lessons when Sato becomes fluent. _"I didn't teach you that yet." _The matron frowns. _"I know," _Sato replies miserably. _"Someone else did. I've only just remembered."_

* * *

Sato remembers more things after that. Little things, here and there: how to braid a girl's hair in different ways, how to fold origami cranes and make paper boxes for the matron's to put their earrings in.

She remembers other things too. Like the property laws that help Takano keep her shop when the men in suits come knocking, rattling the woman's windows with metal pipes. "Who told you this?" Takano demands, clutching Sato's shoulders. When she doesn't answer, she's shaken until her head spins. "Who told you this!" "No-one!" Sato cries and wrenches herself free.

She doesn't like having her arms pinned. It reminds her of crunching bone and a thin, sliver of light she was too stuck to reach. "No-one," Sato repeats, when she's certain Takano won't grab her again. "I just remembered how much I hated that chapter."

It escalates when Sato remembers how to break a man's knee with a crowbar. He'd pulled her into an alley. "I was just going to ask you something!" He wails. His eyes are red and his teeth are rotting. "Maybe." Sato allows and wraps her fingers around the rusting steel. "But I'm curious if this will go the way I remember."

It does.

* * *

Sato is 5 and she won't stop checking her left arm. "Will you stop that!" A matron snaps at her, when she drops the basket of opened pea pods to clutch her arm. "I can feel it." She says. "I don't remember being able to feel it." The matron, fed up, reaches out and twists her ear.

Sato's teeth sink into the bone of the knuckle and she doesn't let go. She traps the woman's arm against her chest in an elbow—her other hand is pushing the woman's head down, forcing her prone even when the bite turns into gnawing.

It's a practiced motion. Why would a child know that?

The screaming rings in her ears long after she's pulled off and the children are crying and someone's pulling something thick out of her mouth and into a bag of ice. Sato sobs and sobs, and says she panicked with the honesty of a child.

A couple of hours later, she sees the blood between her teeth and realizes: _'I'm lying.' _She stands on a stool, staring into the mirror above the sink. Water drips hollowly for what seems like forever _(6 minutes, by the heartbeat.) _and she goes through it in her head. Thinking feels slow, like moving through tar.

_'__I'm a child. I can't bite through bone. I can't bite through flesh. I should have left one of my teeth in her hand, at least.'_

Then she looks up from her teeth. Her eyes are lavender.

She screams.

* * *

It's the same day. She dreams, and when she wakes up, she wonders how she ever could have forgotten.

_'__I never forget.' _She thinks and knows it's true. Sato wanders for a long time after that. She spends hours staring at hands that were supposed to be hers. She spends hours looking at people with dazed, blank eyes. She stares at the sky because it's easier than looking at the unfamiliarity that surrounds her.

The matrons think she's in shock. They can't afford a therapist: the injured matron is suing them and others left after the incident.

They were understaffed.

Sato is 5 when the orphanage falls on hard times. She's 5 when she becomes a pariah. When she finally begins to fit into her skin again. _(When the orphanage can't pay the protection fees anymore. When children start to go missing.)_

Then, there's something trying to fit into her skin with her: It burns swathes in her mind with relentless lavender fury.

Sato wakes up on her 6th birthday and knows that death wasn't cold: it was scalding.

* * *

**(A/N)** For new readers, this is a rewrite of an older fic: I wouldn't recommend checking it out unless it's to compare 2 years difference in writing style. It's fairly interesting in that aspect.

For old readers...Thank you for the overwhelming support you've given me, and the interest you still show despite how I treated the last fic. It was honestly humbling to see the feedback for a rewrite, even after 2 years. I only hope to keep this interesting and better than the old one. :)


	2. The Second Name, But Not Legally

"I'm going." She calls blandly. There's no response, but she sees an eye peek hopefully at her from a crack in the kitchen door. She rolls her eyes and leaves. The door's barely closed before the silence of the orphanage is broken, a relieved exhale that chases her into the street with jubilant cries.

_'__Jerks.' _She thinks, then grimaces. _'They're children. Why do you care?'_

Even the trees seem to hold their breath as she passes, sighing in her wake with a cold whisper that nipped at her ears. There are holes in her gloves, so she has her hands shoved deep into the ratty jacket she wore like a dress. She feels her nerve start to give with every shiver trailed down her spine.

She grimaces as she considers the distance to Takano's shop. Only a few more steps, but the…_relative _warmth of the orphanage was closer. _'Then again,' _Sato thinks. _'Takano is the only one that's talked to me in a year. And she has my paycheck.'_

She palms the key in her pocket, sprints across the street, and begins her fight with the padlocked gate. Her fingers turn red from the abuse and the rust, and the gate rattles on its hinges. "Come on, man!" She growls, voice adorably squeaky. The metal leeches the heat from her fingertips and takes her dexterity with it—it isn't long before she slams her fist against it in defeat.

"I hate winter." She seethes. She leaves the key in the lock and wiggles her fingers between the bars of the gate. Then, she leans back and begins to rattle it like a wind chime. "Hey! Hey, Oba-san!"

"Who is that?" She hears a man's voice say distantly, and she stops shaking the gate to listen.

"It's nothing," She hears Takano say tightly. "Probably just a cat." "I wasn't aware cats spoke." The man says. From inside the nice, warm shop, which could afford to fix the leaks in its roof and the chill in its walls.

"They don't! I swear to god oba-san, you don't open this gate I'll tell everyone you make me work for 16 hours straight!" Sato pauses, waiting for a response, and when she doesn't get any, she kicks the gate. "That's against the labor laws, dude!"

"Shut up you brat! I'm coming!"

Sato grins and frees her right hand—the left one remains stuck between the gaps. "Oh, seriously?"

"And by the way!" Takano snarls, voice becoming louder as she makes her way from the front of the shop. Sato pales and begins to rattle the gate again. "You're 6! I'm already breaking the labor laws, idiot!"

She feels the panic blossom in her belly, a heat that unfurls slowly through her. "Can't you go any faster?" she hisses and wills the heat to spread to her fingers.

Takano stomps out of her shop, shivers rattling her thin frame through the thick green coat. The breeze tugs her brown hair from it's severe ponytail, making the woman's expression sour. The gate swings open a moment later and Sato makes a face at her when she immediately retreats to the shop.

She untucks her hands from behind her back and stares at the metal bar she'd ripped free. "…It deserved it." She says and tosses it over a shoulder.

She runs in before Takano can change her mind. Stomping her boots free of snow, she makes her way to the back room.

The man she heard earlier is sitting there: He's wearing a thin black kimono despite the cold, a walking stick laid neatly over his knees. He's old, thick white hair cropped close to his `head. He must have been handsome in his youth, but the fine bone structure now pulls his skin taut, lending him an almost sallow appearance.

"Get up." She orders him. Takano, who'd paled since she'd last seen her, slaps the back of her head. Sato glints her teeth at her. Takano snatches her hand back. Takano opens her mouth to speak, but is silenced by the old man raising his hand.

"No." He says to Sato.

"Get up. I need those boxes." Sato says and points at the stack of wooden lunchboxes he was sitting on. "I need to make the delivery by 9 today."

He smiles peaceably at her. "Ask politely." "Where did you find this guy?" Sato asks, not breaking eye contact with him. "The museum? Get up old man, I'm not asking again." "Or what?" He asks, and his eyes glitter beadily. They're a striking, gun-metal grey.

"Or I open the window in here. Probably take you seconds to die of the cold, fossil." "Sato." Takano rasps.

_'__Somethings wrong.' _She finally realizes, and Takano tightens her grip on the collar of her jacket. "Forgive her," Takano says quietly.

"Where's the other guy? Small, red-haired, green eyes?" Sato asks over her.

"I canceled all the deliveries today. Did no-one tell you." Takano's voice sounds strangled.

"Oh," Sato says, and flaps her hand dismissively. She still hasn't broken eye contact with the old man. In her peripherals, his smile is growing, like a shadow over the moon.

"Oh, no I figured that out. Those aren't my usual boxes, right? You color-code them. Those are the red-haired guy's deliveries. So." Sato tucks her hands into her pockets. "Why did you lie to me? You just said you canceled all the deliveries today."

"These boxes are mine." The old man drawls patronizingly. "I came to pick up them up because the deliveries were canceled."

"But!" He chirps when Sato opens her mouth to speak. "Since you're already here..." He stands and picks up a single box. He gestures at the other 10. "You'll be helping me." "Am I getting paid?" Sato asks, unfazed. "Sure."

She shrugs and flips up the handles on the bottom box. Her arms burn with more than exertion when she lifts, a wisp of steam curling from between her lips. The boxes rise easily, even when the heat in her belly struggles to spread. It trembles in her arms like elastic stretched to breaking.

Then her arm buckles at the elbow and she loses all feeling in the limb. "What!" She yells at the old man, who had stabbed her in the arm with his staff. She'd barely seen him do it. "Why!" She yells again and flops her arm at him like a noodle.

"Just checking something." He says, eyes narrowed into cunning slits. "Pick them up again." "What is _wrong _with you?" She wails.

"Pick them up!" Takano snaps at her. "This is only because you have my paycheck." Sato snarls and kicks one of the boxes into her hands. "All of them." "Yeah, I got that!"

By the time she could feel her arm and restacked the boxes, the old man had grown tired of watching her walk backward and in circles trying to keep him in her sight. He'd elected to wait outside instead. She could hear him laughing. She hoped he had a heart attack.

"Who are you?" Sato asks when she leaves the store, falling into step behind him. She has to wear 4 of the boxes like a backpack. His single box swings from his walking stick, which he was carrying on his shoulder instead of walking with.

"I am Hibari Hajime." "I'm Sato." "I didn't ask." "Rude. Do you not want to talk to me or something?" "Me? Not wanting to talk to a 3-year-old? Couldn't be." "I'm 33, jerk. What do you want to talk about? Taxes?"

He flicks a look at her, a darting motion she almost doesn't catch. "Well." She admits when his pointed silence begins to dig into her. "I never actually did my taxes. We can talk about tax evasion instead." Hibari Hajime sighs, a flutter she could have mistaken for the breeze. Sato feels a slow grin begin to spread across her face.

She lets her mouth run for the next 15 minutes, one eye on the old man's face: she feels a bright curl of pleasure whenever his expression shifts minutely, steadily looking more like he had sucked on a lemon. With every anecdote, his eyes lose a little more color.

They pass fallen street signs and pavements split by grass. Their breaths trail behind them like smoke—It catches the rising sun and glitters gold in their wake. When she notices, she begins to seek out the patches of sunlight that made it through the trees, face upturned to soak in the warmth. Her lashes are wet from melted snow. Somewhere between telling him of the intern who tripped on his first day and the time she helped cover up a drug trial that killed 5 people, the streets change.

The shops become sturdier, the people refuse to meet their eyes, and the crisp breeze can't cleanse the cigarette smoke that lingers in the air. "Matsumoto!" The old man cries, trying to outwalk her. For an old guy in a kimono, he moved fast.

The man he'd called out to looks up in irritation. A cigarette juts from his clenched teeth, and the sunglasses he'd been using to hide his hangover now peeled his slick hair from his face. He had been counting out money for a stack of cigarettes on the shop counter.

"Oh," Matsumoto says, face falling when he recognizes the old man. He fumbles his cash into his back pocket with twitching fingers. "Hibari-san!" He snatches up the cigarettes (without paying, she notes.) when they come to a stop in front of him. The vendor had taken his distraction to escape.

Sato drops her boxes and squats beside them. She sticks numb fingers into her elbows and watches sadly as precious heat escapes her in clouds of steam. "Who's the kid?" Matsumoto asks, squinting down at her. The old man looks at her. "Mirai." He decides. Sato blinks. "That's not my name."

"Hello, Mirai." Matsumoto says, ignoring her. The old man laughs. "Oh, she doesn't matter. You don't have to be nice to her." "Thank god." Matsumoto sighs, shoulders slumping.

"No, feel free to be nice to me." Sato says, and Matsumoto's eyes snap to her. His lip curls from his teeth. "Get off your ass and pick those boxes up!"

Sato gapes at him.

Matsumoto squints at her. "I don't like her. Where's the other one?" "The other one has a name." The old man says mildly. "And I was wondering that myself. Weren't you supposed to be looking after Okuri?"

"Isn't Okuri the red-headed delivery boy?" Sato asks and is ignored.

Matsumoto pales. "Oh, yeah, he's—" His eyes sweep over the street. He wets his lips. "He's, ah—know what, the brat probably got distracted by a butterfly or something." He laughed and wiped his palms on his pants. "Yeah, that was probably it. Don't worry Wakagashira-san, I'll find him in no time!"

"I wasn't aware you'd lost him." The old man says, lying through his smile. Matsumoto swallows. "Either way, it's too late: You've already burdened me." The old man sighs and in one sharp movement, the box hurtles off his stick and slams into Matsumoto's chest. His staff hits her in the arm on the way back to his shoulder. Sato yelps and punches him in the knee. It's like punching a brick wall.

"I thought we were getting along!" Sato whines and is ignored.

"Take Mira." The old man says and flaps his hand at her. His voice had lost its false cheer. "Find Okuri before his father realizes he's missing. Bring these deliveries back to headquarters, and finish up the orphanage job." "Yes, sir!"

"Come on man. You named me Mirai 2 seconds ago. It's not even a hard name to remember." Sato mutters, and is ignored.

The old man graces them with one more stone-carved smile before he leaves. Matsumoto tracks him until he's out of sight. His hands are bunched into fists to stop them twitching. Sato creaks to her feet and tries to breathe some feeling into her fingers.

"I can't lift those boxes again." She warns Matsumoto, when he's been staring after the Hibari for too long. The heat in her belly had retreated from her arms, leaving them bereft and leaden: She hadn't felt the strain of lifting them before, but it was catching up to her. She shoved her hands into her pockets. "Hey! are you listening to me?" "You." Matsumoto finally says, turning to glare at her. "You know Okuri?"

"Sure. Is he the ginger delivery boy? Freckles? Super small? Terrible business sense?" (She'd never once seen Takano pay him. Sato was half-convinced he was doing it out of the goodness of his heart. Gross.)

"Yeah, that's the twerp. And you," He leans down and puffs the smoke from his cigarette into her face. "are going to find him for me." Sato reaches out and snuffs his cigarette with two fingers.

"Don't do that again." She says coldly. He blinks at her. "But sure, I'll find him for you." She holds out her hand, and he stares blankly at it, still reeling. Sato sighs and snaps her fingers a few times. "Money, man, money. I'm not looking for him if I'm not getting paid."

He shakes his head to clear it then jerks to his feet and rips the cigarette out of his mouth. "Show some damn respect brat!" He roars and hurls the cigarette to the ground. He grinds it uselessly beneath his boot: She'd already snuffed it. "You're going to find that kid," He growled. "And when you bring him back to headquarters, I'll think about not busting your teeth in for that stunt. If not, I'll track you down and do it anyway!"

Sato wipes a bit of his spittle from her face. "You could just pay me." She says drily. He'd already stormed off though, lunch boxes in hand and determined to get the last word. She watches as he disappears at a fork in the road. "Then again…" She begins to thumb through the wad of cash she'd pulled from his back pocket. "I guess this is an okay starting amount." She shoves it back into her pocket and begins to meander down the other prong of the road, toward the center of the town.

The street that soon unfolds is lined with trash and food stalls—fires spit at roasting meats and mingle with a nearby fish monger's roars. Broken glass bottles are scattered along the underbrush. Further ahead are the spinning lights of a wheeled toy—the woman controlling it is yelling out its endorsements.

"There's a toy shop nearby then. A good place for a child to run, but…too obvious if he knows he's being looked for."

Sato marks off the section of the street and turns around. Behind her, the street widens into some semblance of a road. There are more restaurants than food stalls on this stretch. She begins to wander down it. There are men in suits decorating the outdoor seating, heads tilted back to enjoy the cold as cigarette ash snowed from the lapels of their leather jackets. The sound of clinking _alcohol_ bottles itch in her ears. They must've had long nights, to be drinking at 8 am on a Monday.

She stops walking. Now that she thought about it…she'd assumed Matsumoto was hungover, but he may have just been tired.

"Hey!" She yells, jogging up to one of the tables. "Matsumoto sent me." One of the men immediately throws his head back and groans. His friend sighs and clacks his bottle down onto the table.

"Alright." He says, pinching his brow. "You're one of those kids we grabbed from the orphanage, right?" Sato nods slowly. "Then what the _fuck _are you doing listening to him!" He roars and snaps to his feet. His legs jostle the table. Instantly, he closes his eyes and cradles his head in one hand. "You," He says carefully. "are supposed to be at the orientation session. I didn't spend all night busting my ass on these streets for you to not pick up the slack in the morning!"

"And I would love nothing more than to do that," Sato soothes as he lowers himself into his chair with a wince, eyes still closed. "Except I need to find Okuri first." "Why would I know where that brat is?" He moans. "He's probably hiding somewhere, crying and getting his clothes dirty. Doesn't he know we have to clean that shit?"

Sato makes a sympathizing noise and begins to edge away. She pauses. He groans again, louder. "Hey." She asks, turning around. "Are you guys Yakuza?" "Well, you'd fucking know that if you were at orientation, wouldn't you!"

"Definitely Yakuza." She mutters and picks up the pace.

Everything she'd heard about Okuri seemed to point at him being a sniveling, though well-off child: He needed caretakers, people washed up after him, and he did deliveries even though he didn't need the money. It was why she wastes her first few hours trying to find him in shops and parks.

In the end, she begins having to go through vendors: Maybe he'd been stupid enough to buy breakfast from one of them, even though they gossiped and would rat you out without being paid. It takes her 13 stalls, but she strikes gold.

Not because he'd bought breakfast, but because she'd found another thug. "That kid stole my gun!" The thug cried through a mouthful of teriyaki. And with one sentence, Sato's search criteria falls apart around her ears.

She'd been looking for a naïve child. This was not the actions of a naïve child.

The puzzle pieces click together in her head and Sato throws her head back and groans. He stole a gun. The Yakuza looked after him. The old man had mentioned his father.

A new search criteria takes shape: Okuri was the son of the local Yakuza boss, he didn't want to be found, and he was armed.

"Are you looking for him?" Sato asks the thug through gritted teeth, pinching her brow till her nails leave indents in her skin. "Oh. Well. I will, right after…" "…Of course. Do you know which way he went?" "Left." The man answers. Sato thanks him, then steals his second gun because they were on a straight road.

She has to backtrack another 2 blocks before she finds him.

By then, she had worked up enough energy to be pissed about it: Her arms hurt, it was cold, the fire in her belly was refusing to make her legs move faster because she was 'tired', and she was probably going to get shot over less money than she made at Takano's.

So when she spots red hair in an alley, she puts her feet apart, points the gun at him, and clicks the safety off.

Okuri, who had _his _gun pointed at some guy holding a stick, groaned. "Can we do this later? I'm busy."

"Sorry," Sato replies. "I've already been paid."

"What the fuck is wrong with you kids?" The man with the stick asks and massages his temples.

"Delivery girl?" Okuri says, surprised, and makes the mistake of turning to look at her.

"Are you an idiot?" Sato asks when the thug disarms him in a clean movement and has the gun pointed at him in another.

Okuri puts his hands up. "I can't believe you're working with the rival group!" Okuri yells at her. "Don't you have any pride in your hometown?"

"She's not with me, kid." The thug says. "I don't know who the fuck either of you are." "Well if this goes badly and you want to track me down later, my name is Matsumoto." Sato grins, then points the gun at him.

"Put the gun down, I need this guy alive." She pauses, then frowns. "Wait. Do I need you alive?"

"Yes!" Okuri yells and turns red.

"Geez, I was just asking. You heard him, put the gun down."

"You can't even fire that," The thugs says flatly. "You're 4. You'll break your fingers from the recoil." "I'm 33!" Sato yells and shoots.

She breaks her fingers from the recoil.

"I hate you." Okuri hisses, helping her let go of the gun. "You didn't have to kill him! How are we going to interrogate him now!"

"Is that what you were doing?" She snarls, tears streaming down her face as she tries to figure out how to pop her finger back into its knuckle.

"Obviously! Are you an idiot?" "Well he's still alive if you're so bothered!" They both turn to look at the man. He gurgles: a wet, gasping noise, and blood pools in a crimson halo around his head. They both turn away. "Yeah, no." "Yeah, he's like—neck shots, am I right?"

Okuri rolls his eyes. He grabs her hand and jerks her finger back into its socket in a sharp movement. Sato screams.

"What! What! You! Can't just do that!" She hollers, hunched protectively around her hand. Okuri puts the safety back on the gun. "Stop being a baby." He says.

"I'll kill you! Grabby hands! Grabby hands Okuri!" "What are you, 5? Don't call me that!" "Try and stop me!" He picks up the stick the thug had dropped and whaps her over the head with it. "Don't call me that!" He repeats.

Sato unfurls to her full height with a snarl. The fire in her belly flares, settling in her chest like liquor and she feels her head lurch then steady at the sudden intrusion. The spiking pain in her hand dulls in face of the inferno.

"You," She huffs, eyes still wet with tears. "Are coming with me."

Okuri pales. His grip tightens on his stick, and Sato flinches when she sees the purple glint reflecting in his eyes. Her hands whip to her face and she covers her eyes as she lurches out of the alleyway. "Shut up." She rasps when she hears him walk up beside her with slow, careful steps.

"I didn't say anything."

She squeezes her eyes shut and begins to count her heartbeats.

"You mentioned Matsumoto. Why are you helping him?" Okuri asks. "He's useless."

"I needed to kill time." She mutters a few minutes later when the heat stops trying to crack through her skin. It rolls lowly in her belly like liquid flame and trickles lazily through her limbs. She digs the heels of her palms into her eyes for a moment, then allows them to fall limply to her sides.

"Besides," She continues hoarsely. She clears her throat and tries again. "Besides, he's already paid me to find you." "You stole from him, and now you need to deliver or he'll track you down." Okuri summarizes knowingly.

"Well," He sighs grandly. "There's nothing to it. You saved my life, so I'll do you a favor and cooperate." He lays the stick on his shoulder in a way that reminds her of the old man from earlier, and waves for her to lead the way.

She glares at him. "You know, I think I'm starting to realize why everyone I've talked to hates you."

He scowls at her. "They don't hate me." They walk in silence for a few minutes. She's watching him out of the corner of her eye, which is the only reason she realizes it's snowing. She starts, watching as the soft flakes settle in his hair and the folds of his blue scarf. She holds out a hand. The snowflake melts before it touches her skin. She sighs quietly and shoves her hands deeper into her pockets.

"…Did they say they hate me?"

Sato sighs again, louder. This time the steam that pours from her lips is a dense cloud that throws its heat back into her face before the wind takes it.

"…Woah." Okuri says quietly. Then: "You have no idea where you're going, do you."

…

The 10-minute walk to the gang's headquarters took them 30 minutes.

Sato had stopped being able to stand the silence 5 minutes in. The conversation was stilted, and at some point, she'd grabbed his stick off his shoulder and bolted with it. She then reached the street corner in 3 seconds instead of 3 minutes and slammed directly into a wall with no way to decelerate. Okuri had grabbed his stick back, whapped her over the head to double her headache, then entertained her the rest of the walk to avoid her getting bored again.

On the plus side, the fire in her belly had settled after being used. On the not so plus side, Okuri's idea of entertainment was telling her about chemistry. It was a weird thing for him to know and would have interested her if she didn't already know everything he did.

"That's not how redox reactions work." She'd snapped. Okuri, who'd never been told he was wrong before, sniffed. "How do you know?" She steps on the back of his shoe. "Because _I_ graduated high-school and _you're_ 4!" "I'm 7!" He'd yelled back, and the miffed silence lasted all of 3 minutes before they were forced to decide on a safer topic. (Sato kept stepping on the back of his shoes till he talked to her, and his legs were too short to outrun her.) The topic was the Yakuza.

It was why Sato knew to run ahead when they get there. She runs all the way up to the man slumped against one of the gate posts—His friend had dragged a chair out and was asleep in it. His gun swung limply between his legs and his head was tilted back; mouth open.

"Hey! Yuusaku-san!" She hollers. The man who was asleep jerks out of his chair and wipes drool from his mouth with his gun. "What? Who's there?"

Sato, who thought Yuusaku was the other one, has to make an awkward spin to face him. "It's me!" She recovers. "Mirai!"

"Hey," the gatepost guy rumbles. "Yuusaku, do you know this kid?"

"Of course he knows me." She grins. "I'm his daughter." Yuusaku's face fell.

…

By the time Okuri catches up to her, she'd managed to convince Yuusaku that she was the result of his one-night stand with Dango Stand Takano, a woman who, to date, he'd never heard of. Unfortunately for him, this meant he had no idea that Takano was Japanese and could not have made a mixed-race child with him. Sato is halfway into getting his phone number and bank details for the 'court' so they could contact him about child support when Okuri slaps Yuusaku's pen out of her hand.

"Get it together man!" Okuri yells at the guard, red-faced and panting. "You just gave your bank details to a first grader!"

"Correction," Sato says. "I'm a 33 year-old attorney!"

"Oh my god," Yuusaku says, staring at the bank details written on her hand. He sits down heavily in his chair. "I'm so hungover."

"I've missed this." She admits, watching as Yuusaku stared soullessly into the distance. "Nobody talks to me anymore, so I don't have anyone to lie to."

"Maybe," Okuri hisses, grabbing her hand and rubbing off the details. "This is why they don't talk to you."

"I already memorized it, don't bother."

Now that she'd terrorized the working class, Sato was free to take in the complex. She'd expected them to be walking uphill to an abandoned warehouse or restaurant. Instead, the wrought iron gates guarded a weathered villa and its sprawling grounds. Snow swayed quietly down toward them, Sato's breath steaming steadily from her parted lips like a chimney.

"This isn't a gang." She mutters. "This is a syndicate." She tears her eyes away from the house and begins to pick out smaller structures that broke up the landscape like warts. Housing for the Yakuza?

"Obviously." Okuri snaps and releases her hand: he'd managed to rub most of it raw, but the numbers were gone. "What did you think we were?"

She flicks a scowl at him. "This is a small town. You shouldn't be able to sustain such a large force."

"And yet here we are." Sato flinches, turning sharply toward the new voice. The two guards at the gate were on their feet and bowing. The gate creaks open and a portly man steps out. He was wearing a grey suit, thin ginger hair combed back over a bald spot. His buttons strained.

Okuri stiffens beside her and fists one hand in the back of her jacket, where the man couldn't see. "Outou-san." He rasps quietly and ducks his head. Sato, who'd represented worse clients in the short time she'd been employed, finds herself more curious than afraid. So, this was the boss.

"Where were you." The man rumbles. "Because of you, Hibari-san was troubled. And Matsumo." "Matsumoto." One of the guards corrects with a whisper and is ignored.

Okuri draws himself up, but his eyes still don't meet his father's—they're focused somewhere on his chest instead. The hand in the back of Sato's jacket is shaking. "I was interro—"

Sato hisses and stomps on his foot. (She barely remembers to draw the fire out of her leg before she does.) "He," She says, speaking over him. "was attacked by a rival gang member. When I found him, he'd already killed the man."

Okuri's teeth click shut. His father drags his eyes toward her. "Who are you?"

Sato gives him her best court smile. "I'm Mirai. Matsumoto paid me to find Okuri after he let him get kidnapped." The lies pour from her with blatant ease. She shifts when the silence drags on too long, shielding Okuri behind her taller frame.

_'__It's just like defending a client.'_ She tells herself weakly. _'Except the other lawyer has a gun.'_

"Is this true?" He rumbles finally, beady eyes glaring down at her. Okuri nods mutely, a tight, jerky motion. "You killed someone." His father repeats and Okuri nods. "Did your flames awaken?" Okuri goes still. He exhales once, shakily.

His father's lips twist. "That's what I thought." He turns away from them and Sato feels some of the tension drain out of her shoulders.

"Wait!" Okuri cries and Sato snaps her eyes to him. _'Shut up!' _She screams with her eyes. _'Shut up!' _ His father stops, halfway through the gates, and inclines his head. Okuri breathes out shakily and lets go of her jacket. He licks his lips.

_'__We were almost clear, you idiot!' _

"I didn't awake my Flames," Okuri says. "But I found you a Cloud." His father turns around fully and Okuri flicks the safety off his gun. The metal digs into her back a moment later. Sato's stomach flips. "What are you doing." Sato whispers. "I'm going to shoot you." Okuri says back.

Her heart rate spikes and bile rises in the back of her throat. _'Not bile,' _She realizes dully when the burn swells from her throat and into her face. _'Fire.'_

Purple glints on the boss's teeth and she hears Okuri swallow beside her. When she looks, he's smiling—the sickly, sad smile of someone that'd do anything for approval.

"God," Sato says, stomach dropping and eyes glowing lavender. "I _really _know why everyone hates you."


	3. Settling

Sato slaps herself across the face. It's only when her ears ring and her neck burns that she realizes she'd forgotten to draw the fire out of her arms. "Oh, shit," She says. "I think I gave myself a concussion."

The thugs marching her through the compound exchange looks over her head.

"Are my eyes still purple though?" She pats her cheeks, then holds her hands in front of her eyes like goggles.

Neither of the men answers her.

She sighs. "We've been walking for ages. Are we there yet?"

"We've been walking for 2 minutes!" One of them finally snaps, knocking his gun against the back of her head.

"2 and a half you ignorant fuck." She hisses, then flinches. "Sorry, I'm still angry about the whole betrayal thing. Does he do that a lot? Okuri?"

"Are you kidding me?" The other thug snorts. "He'd sell you out for a blade of grass."

"Okay, I'll keep you in mind for when I assassinate the child."

The thug who had spoken pales, and his friend shot him a warning look—the gun digs deeper into her head.

"Shut up."

After Okuri had told his father she was a "cloud" (whatever that meant), he'd gestured for one of the thugs to take control of the gun in her back. "Bring her to the foyer, and get Hibari." The boss had rumbled, before turning on a shined heel and disappearing through the gates. Okuri hadn't cast her a second look as he slunk away, tail between his legs.

For what it was worth though, she'd figured out why he knew so much about chemistry: "A meth lab!" She yells delightedly, pointing at a building in the far distance. Its windows were propped open despite the snow thickening on its sills, the white blanket unable to hide the dead vegetation stretching from the building like a toxic shadow. There's a trolley of empty propane tanks beside the front door.

"What the fuck?" One of the thugs say. "Why do you know that?"

"One of my clients tried to lie to me about his operation. He was so stupid, don't lie to your lawyer? I am _at _your house, I can _smell _the fumes, _no _I don't want any tea, _no _I am not going to tell you why I know those pots are going to blow if you don't fix your tubing, but I _am _going to leave if you don't. Anyways, he lost custody of his kids."

"_Fuck_, you're weird. I hope the boss shoots you. We're here, take your shoes off."

Sato tears her eyes away from the meth lab and blinks up at the house they'd walked up to without her noticing. Its 3 stories, beige walls, and layers of sloped terracotta roofing. It reminds her of Italy, but as though she were looking at it in a mirror. Inverted; off somehow.

_'Don't let them take you to the secondary location.' _

She flicks her eyes at the gun pointed at her head. The thug is glaring at her.

She crouches and begins undoing the laces on her boots. She's on a veranda. Though the front door is closed against the elements, voices spill out of a nearby window. She recognizes one as the boss, and the other as the old man who'd walked with her: Hibari Hajime.

"You're certain she's a cloud?"

"Her eyes glowed purple. I don't know where my useless son found one, but…can you train her?"

"They're not the sort to do well in captivity."

Sato unthreads her shoelace. Hiding her hands with her body, she loops it to a more manageable length.

"She's a child, 7 at best. It'll be easy to train the loyalty into her, and the mouth out."

"And if that doesn't work?"

"We'll keep her here till she imprints on the territory. I'm asking you because you're the least likely to be injured during the settlement period."

Sato kicks off her boots. The thug with the gun had relaxed, caught up in arguing with his partner. She turns slightly, trying to see if the other one was armed: her lips thin. He was.

"Hm. What about her passport? Identity?"

"She's an orphan, we'll just 'adopt' her, same the rest."

Sato pumps the fire into her legs and snaps the laces taut. She spins on a heel, looping it around the gun and wrenching it down, then to the side—the gun is ripped from his grip. She lunges for it and _('Too slow, not enough time to turn around—') _shoots through the gap of her elbow, behind her. It cracks into the armed thug's knee cap.

The recoil turns her momentum around and she slams onto her back. The hand holding the gun is hurled upward, still in motion, and _('I need more time. Distraction?') _she fires it into the air.

The thug she'd stolen from jerks away from her, and the other screams, curled around his leg. She sets her feet flat on the ground and hurls herself upward. The door opens behind her.

One leg slides back, and by the time she's upright, she's already kicking off with it. She bolts, the field flying past her in a jagged streak of green and white.

She's nearly at the gate when it happens. She doesn't remember falling, but as she hits the ground with her forearms and skids 50 feet on the side of her face, the gun spinning out of her grip, she's just glad she remembers anything at all.

She lays there for a long time, clouds spilling from her lips as she pants. It reminds her of a steam engine. She can't feel her legs. The sky spins, overcast and rippling like a reflection in a pond—it dips down to kiss the horizon, and her eyes unfocus trying to follow it.

Her ears are ringing.

She's going to throw up.

She can smell blood.

Shoes crunch on gravel, and in the corner of her eye, she sees a gnarled hand pick a staff off the ground.

"Old man," She murmurs. "Did you throw your staff at me?"

"Oh," he says, surprised. Then: _"Oh." _In disappointment. His voice sounds like its underwater. "You're the child from the delivery shop. Miki or something."

Sato turns her face into the cold dirt. The snow is melting around her, and she can feel the water rising slowly. It laps against her lips.

"Let me go."

There's a rustling noise as he shrugs. "Go."

She closes her eyes.

"I'm not going to settle here or work for him. I hate organizations."

"I thought you were a lawyer."

She smiles into the dirt. Her head hurts. "I wanted to go free-lance, you know. But I was one of their best." Her voice is thickening, slowing. "They wouldn't let me go."

"So you stayed?"

"So I got out the hard way. He lost an eye, and I took an insanity plea." She grins then, cheeks burning, and the water trickles into her mouth.

"Well," the old man says. More footsteps then, and a heavier set she recognizes as the boss. "at least you'll be interesting."

"No," She slurs, vision beginning to fade. "I'm going to be a _menace._"

* * *

She spends the first few days recovering from a concussion.

"You're lucky," a woman says, shucking the covers off the bed beside her. She dumps it into a bucket full of soapy red water. The mattress is crusted red. Sato bends over the side of her bed and hurls. "The road rash all over your face isn't going to scar."

She can't see much of the infirmary around her headache, but she hears the bucket slosh as the woman takes it away. "What's your name?" The woman calls distantly, and there's the sound of running water.

"Sat—Mirai. My name is Mirai." The less this place knew of the name on her passport, the easier it'd be to escape.

"Have they talked with you yet, Mirai?"

Mirai snorts. She jangles the handcuffs keeping her attached to the bed frame. "Do they need to?"

"You did miss orientation. Well, there's no helping it." The woman's voice grows louder and she reappears cleaning blood off her hands with a rag. She sits on the bed beside Mirai. Her hands hesitate a moment before fingers are holding Mirai's hair out of her face as she throws up. The sour stench of bile is thick in her nose.

All she can focus on is how gentle the woman's hands are. Mirai chances a look at her and is disappointed to find a completely unremarkable face. She wouldn't forget it—she never did—but this woman would forget her.

"You're a cloud. That means you have cloud flames. Do you know what that is?"

She didn't. The woman tells her. After a while, she starts recognizing the terms—dying will, mafia, sun, cloud, rain, guardians, bosses, skies, _Hibari._

The woman doesn't notice when she stops paying attention; when she stares at her hands and turns them over and over and over.

Her hands were small and soft, washed out by the winter weather. They were supposed to be large, ink-stained, slender fingers, and gold nail polish. They were supposed to be a brown richened by the summer that spilled through the windows of her corner office.

She balls her hands into fists and squeezes them shut. Her nails are too short to break skin. She had always kept her nails long.

"What I don't understand," The woman is saying. "Is how you awakened your flames so young."

"I guess," Mirai says. "I just really didn't want to die."

* * *

On day 10 she plunges her hand into a fire.

It hurts.

She's not dreaming.

She doesn't believe she's awake either.

* * *

There's a cafeteria. On day 12, she finds it's roof access and climbs over the railing. Her weight is on her heels, the only thing in contact with the roof. Her back presses into the metal bars, and they brand her through her clothes with ice.

She looks down and realizes: _'I'm not scared of dying.'_

She stays there for a long time, the wind threatening to drag her down—she leans into it once or twice and waits. But her fingers don't shake, her breaths don't waver, her vision doesn't spot. She's not scared.

Her fingers are too numb to climb back over. She feeds the flame in her belly to them, coaxing them back to life. It hurts when they thaw.

She climbs back over and doesn't understand.

_'I'm not scared of dying._' She thinks, and feels the flames settle in her fingers—it throbs there until her nerves wake up and the air condenses on her skin. _'So what am I scared of, for these flames to remain strong?'_

She reaches out and squeezes one of the bars. It bends under the force. Her bones creak. When she opens her hand, its bruised.

* * *

On day 13, they give her a routine: Curfew at 8, training with the old man from 5 to 7. There are breaks in between for meals, and a guard outside her room. Anyone escorting her with a gun is to do so at a distance: she can see how the precautions rankle their pride.

It makes her smile, just a little bit.

Another precaution: she wasn't allowed to explore the compound until her loyalty was secured. They were hoping her boredom would work as an incentive.

It didn't. She uses the meal times to talk with other children—she learns their schedules, how long it takes them to walk between buildings. She learns where the buildings are relative to each other, and draws a map one of them confirms.

On day 14, she pays one of them with her desert, measures the length of their stride with a stick, and asks them to count the steps between each building.

On day 15, her map, hidden in a slit in her mattress, has measurements.

* * *

They don't send guards when she's training with the old man. He's teaching her martial arts. She doesn't know what discipline it is, but when she lands on her ass for the 5th time in 3 minutes, he sighs and starts with gymnastics instead.

She's terrible at it.

She can't use her fire—_flames _to help her. Excess force unbalances her. He's trying to curb her reliance on her flames early.

She's alright with that. As far as she could tell, the old man was the only one who could straight up _block _her flames—if he wanted to take away his advantage, he was welcome to it.

* * *

The old man is the one she spends the most time with. She talks a lot.

"What happened after the trial?"

"You were listening?" She asks, surprised—her handstand wavers, and he corrects her posture with a quick tap of his staff. He's sitting cross-legged in his garden, grass stains decorating his kimono. There's a cup of tea in his hands—behind her is a koi pond, lined with sea glass instead of rocks.

"You make yourself hard to ignore."

"He walked right up to me and punched me in the face. He broke my nose."

"Did you press charges?"

"…I didn't."

"Why?"

She scowls. Sweat drips off her face, throbbing in her ears. "I was busy."

"You're lying." He sounds surprised. _(If she was lying now, it meant she wasn't lying before—about anything.)_

"I framed his sister for murder. Dragging out the case would have increased the risk of me getting caught." She's still lying.

He doesn't call her out this time. Her posture wavers, and she falls. She plunges into the koi pond, bubbles escaping her in streams.

"…I felt bad." She says into the water, bubbles around her head, and a fish passes by without acknowledging her truth.

The old man pulls her out a moment later. He hadn't the last 6 times.

"Aw," She says, gasping as the winter dug its claws into her lungs. He hands her his teacup, frowning. Her teeth rattle as she shakes. "You care."

* * *

It takes her till day 20 to find out where the boss sleeps. Her guard likes to talk to his wife on his phone—he's complaining about something new tonight. About having to walk 10 minutes to the boss' house each day to turn on the heaters. It was fine when he used to be part of the guard around his house, but now that he was assigned to the cloud brat? Wasn't it so unreasonable?

Mirai agreed; it was. The length of her guard's stride is 3 feet. According to her map, there are 2 buildings 10 minutes away at that speed.

On day 22 she swaps t-shirts with one of the kids in the cafeteria— short black hair, brown skin, they look similar enough for her absence to go un-noted.

She grabs a newspaper off one of the guard's chairs before she leaves. When she gets to the boss' house, she walks right in the front door. She raises the newspaper in answer to any confused looks—she's not sure what they assume she's there to do, but they're too busy to think of stopping her.

She pours bleach in his toilet bowl and slides down the rain pipe beside his window to escape.

On day 23 the old man tells her one of the servants in the boss' house had died of exposure to chlorine gas.

"If you're going to assassinate someone," He tells her coolly. "Creativity isn't enough. Your method has to be specific to your target."

Lying on her back in the grass, she wonders if she imagines the note of pride in his voice. "You snitched on me." She says, a little disbelievingly.

"Consequences are best learned early."

She frowns at the sky. It's the weekend, at 6 pm. On weekends, their training ended early: at 5. She'd lost that privilege. Along with her meal times.

Well, she was still allowed meals—just not to go to the cafeteria. They'd moved her into the old man's accommodation, a one-story building with a garden larger than it was. Her world had become smaller, her confinements closer. It wasn't much of a punishment, but the boss had looked at her like he expected her to start crying: so she did.

"Why did I have to cry back there?" She asks.

The old man snorts. "You're a cloud. Having your territory reduced is supposed to piss you off."

She smiles slowly. "Is it? I can use that."

* * *

It takes her a while to realize that she and the old man weren't the only ones in his house—she's not sure why. She had seen the signs of abuse, knew Okuri wouldn't want to stay with his father no matter how badly he wanted his approval.

She just hadn't expected to see him walk out of one of the guest rooms, wearing an oversized t-shirt as pajamas and dragging a staff behind him like a security blanket. She gapes and the toothbrush falls out of her mouth. It clatters to the ground.

He blinks at her, then squints. "Hibari-sensei?" He calls. "I thought dogs weren't allowed in the house?"

Mirai is a 33-year-old grown woman. This does nothing to curb the fury with which she flings him 30 feet and into the koi pond.

* * *

(A/N) What are some fluffier moments you'd like to see in this story? This chapter is a little shorter to get the update ball rolling :)


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